This is how it happens...

This is how it happens. A space entirely green – private garden, allotment with trees and hedges, playing field - is taken over for building a new estate of private houses. Local people campaign against this for a decade helping to win planning gain concessions which, as anticipated by the developer, reduces the original footprint of hard surface by 50% or even more. The houses are built and occupied. The original application included two 1930s houses on the main road. One was demolished to create Victoriana Way – the road that leads into the estate – the other was converted into a temporary sales office, its front garden hard surfaced to allow would-be buyers to park. This house, after the new estate was mainly occupied, was sold privately, but only after a new property with detached garage had been built on half of the old house’s rich back garden, and a double garage built into its other half. Whittle away, whittle whittle, whittle. The new owner of the old house has submitted a planning application to build another two storey house on top of this double garage which he declares ‘surplus to requirements’ – hardly surprising given the parking now available on his frontage - extending into the small space left behind his house for a lawn. Is this worth making a fuss about? Isn’t the main damage already done? Lin and I, since our road’s residents’ opinion has been formally requested, submitted an objection.

From: planning.comments@birmingham.gov.uk

Subject: Comments on 2012/05776/PA have been received by the council.

Date: 30 August 2012 18:35:39 EEST

Comments made by Simon Baddeley of Beaudesert Road Residents

Thank you for informing us about this application to build a two storey house at the rear of 179 Hamstead Road, Handsworth, Birmingham, B20 2RL - 2012/05776/PA.
We believe that approving the proposed building will be detrimental to the area and therefore object to the application. Our objection is submitted in the context of policies to enhance the ‘liveability’ of our city, safety and security partnerships, the restoration of parks, street improvement schemes and measures to generate housing markets and the importance of not approving planning applications which set precedents contrary to these policies.For some, getting planning permission to dispose of part of their back garden for building is tantamount to finding oil there – especially if they are minded to take the profit and live elsewhere on the proceeds, bequeathing the in-filling to their abandoned neighbours. Parks and allotments and sometimes playing fields enjoy some statutory protection. Far fewer incentives or disincentives exist to protect private green space. 

Relentlessly we see the whittling away of city green space, diminishing the aesthetic of ‘leafy suburbs’, depleting the wildlife these spaces support, removing the Co2 processing capacity provided by trees and the absorbency that lessens flooding. Car ownership continues to rise. Everywhere we see householders and landlords slabbing over front and back gardens for yet more parking, building single, and in this case, even double garages on them. The Council, whilst constantly proclaiming its commitment to a cleaner, greener city, helps accelerate the hard-surfacing of Birmingham by approving applications of this kind. One reason for our objection to this application is that this development will destroy yet more green space, in an area that already has substantially less than the minimum recommended percentage of such space per head of population. The loss of even small green spaces in Handsworth, when aggregated, contributes to the continuing degradation of the urban environment, taking away yet more play areas, opportunities for cultivation and the capacity to absorb rainwater, subtracting from the local store of precipitated water and encouraging flash floods inside and, in the case of Handsworth, eastward into Perry Barr and the Tame River basin. 

This application involves the construction of a property extending over a recently built double garage in what was yet another mature garden next to Hampstead Road in an area that has already seen substantial and unpopular in-filling over recent decades. Between 2005-2008, no fewer than 84 new properties were constructed by Westbury Homes, now Persimmon Homes (ref: No. N/01514/03/FUL) on a large part of the Victoria Jubilee Allotments. Prior to that some 21 properties were constructed around a new road backing on to Bowling Green Lane and before that further houses were built around Crick Lane on another part of the Victoria Jubilee Allotments site.Another concern is that the applicant, whether intentionally or unintentionally, has created a back garden beside a new double garage, which consists of no more than a small lawn, as a precedent for circumventing advice on maintaining bio-diversity contained in the City’s 2008 Mature Suburbs Planning Guidance. It is through actions like these - equivalent of environmental ‘death by a thousand cuts’ - that our community experiences a relentless whittling away of its remaining green space; in this case a back garden made available for another house, in many other cases, gardens - front and back - stripped of lawns, flower beds, shrubs and trees to create yet more car-parking; homes with such tiny play-spaces for young children that they drop out of the family housing market, and become more liable for multi-occupation in an area already acknowledged as being blighted by an overabundance of such properties.  On this basis we withhold approval of any further hard surfaces being laid on our limited supply of green space, much of which has suffered from intense development over the years, not least the aforementioned estate accessed by Victoriana Way which from 2004 was built on private allotments.
As an additional reason for refusing this application we cite the planned development application N/04912/05/OUT in the rear of 173 Hamstead Road, Handsworth, B20 2RL rejected by the Planning Committee in 2005, for reasons which include those contained in our present objection to this application.
At first sight this application, with its required design and access statement, would appear  to conform to the City’s 2008 Mature Suburbs Planning Guidance on controlling residential intensification. The building shown in the application’s accompanying documents seeks to fit the style of other houses recently built on the new Victoriana Way and will be built over a recently constructed double garage, and extending into green space which, for the time being, is the applicant’s own back garden. 

But this application is far from an example of ‘preserving what is good and not making worse what is less good’ (first principle of Environmental Policy Advice 3.8 in the Birmingham Plan). However closely the proposed building matches the local vernacular with existing access to Victoriana Way, the fact remains that it is being built in a back garden. It represents yet another of many attempts at getting a windfall development past the planning rules and is clearly yet another opportunistic attempt at in-filling in one of Birmingham's best known ‘mature suburbs’.

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Jacqueline emailed me with an announcement. She’s archivist for Clavering in Essex, the village where I and my sister were born at Mill End Dairy Farm. Last year, I’d sent Jacqueline mementoes of my grandmother, Bar, and my mum, Barbara, for use in her book: ‘The story of the people of Clavering, at home and in service, during the Second World War’. 190 pages. 200+ illustrations. Fully indexed.

BOOK LAUNCH COFFEE MORNING

Clavering at War by Jacqueline Cooper
Saturday 29 September 11am - 1 pm
Clavering Christian Centre (former URC), Stortford Road

All welcome for coffee and cakes and the new book!

Enquiries  from author tel 01799 550462

Email jacqueline.cooper@virgin.net

Books from 24 Pelham Road, Clavering, Essex CB11 4PQ   £10 + pp postal copies

I guess it shows that I’m buccaneering the truth when on other occasions I say that all I learned of the countryside came from growing up with my stepfather, Jack. My grandmother, Bar Maine, bought an old cottage in Clavering in the 1930s and turned it into a farm – with Jersey cows, hens – full size as well as bantams – geese and some horses. 

Me on Gypsy, Bar on the hay wagon around 1945

She continued to live in and visit London, but the farm was her home, the place where she died in 1969. Jacqueline tells me it’s now a riding school and that its owner would be happy for me to arrange a visit. I shall certainly buy the book. I’m not sure it would be a good idea to revisit Mill End, despite its owner’s generous offer. Some things are meant to remain in another country, always present in imagination.

****

On Wednesday evening we drove down to the city to see the Edward Lear Exhibition - oil paintings, watercolours, drawings and engravings - brilliantly curated by Despina Zernioti -ζερνιώτη δέσποινα - displayed in a wonderfully made temporary structure, with gaps through which one glimpsed the grand décor of the palace...

... intended by Sir Thomas Maitland to impress the Ionians under our benign protection, by a talented team of helpers and supporters inside the Palace of St Michael and St George at the head of the Liston. We were entertained by one of the city bands in company with an assembly of visitors, here to say farewell to the exhibition which had run since May. 

Once I had read the journals of his almost solitary travels across Greece and Albania, and  a DVD series made a few years ago, that followed his routes comparing his landscapes with the same places now, I had to stop thinking of Lear as I, and most of his admirers still do, as a writer of enduring nonsense rhymes. Compared to Lear’s artistry in evoking a fascination with and love of place – especially Greece and most of all Corfu - his unique contribution to nonsense, long before Dadaism and Surrealism, seems a side line, possibly a sort of self-ridiculing compensation according to a psychological appreciation – one among five brilliantly illuminating essays in the exhibition catalogue – by Anthony Stevens. 

The Edward Lear Exhibition catalogue

An endearing and memorable clown becomes a troubled and courageous genius, explorer and remembrancer, his pen and brush connecting his eye and heart to the places through which he travels, touching things, even the sky and distant prospects – pre-photographic images as accurate and truthful as the most advanced cameras. One small sketch shows the Parthenon looming in isolated majesty beyond a grove of trees, surrounded by broad meadows. Amid the enthusiastic chat and pacings around the lovely exhibits I stared at these delicate tantalising landscapes, securely framed, protected by glass, neatly titled, I could hear their silence; grieve for the unreachable magic that Lear almost allows us to touch, and see and smell. We left morose, as I suspect did others.

Παλαιοκαστρίτσα - Paleocastritsa by Edward Lear

“When choosing somewhere to live” advised my stepfather, “settle somewhere where you can’t be disappointed. Go somewhere that has been comprehensively ruined” 
We’ve tried to do that and by and large succeeded. 
The Pimping of  Panorea by Maria Strani-Potts....Maria used this parable about Corfu where she was born, a citizen of the island.

...For years they had hated hard work and had come to resent the fact that they had to work in the fields and on the sea in order to survive. It is not known who had the idea first, but the notion that the time was ripe to exploit Panorea and to benefit from her eternal qualities sprang up suddenly and quickly spread widely amongst them. They decided that if they turned Panorea into a prostitute, they would benefit enormously. Panorea was so well known in the world, so popular, that they would have no problem in selling her charms at any price; so one morning members of the clan woke up, determined to take the lead in becoming her pimps. This would be beneficial to all, they proclaimed. It was such an easy thing to do. Panorea had been a muse to poets, painters, and writers. Kings, Emperors, and Empresses adored her and visited her often, and many scholars studied her history.  Pimping appealed to them; it was neither burdensome, demanding, nor did it need careful planning. They needed neither a substantial capital investment nor much in the way of hard work. In a very short space of time Panorea was turned into a commodity. In the beginning, fresh and wonderful as she was, she brought vast profits and satisfaction to her clients.....

Maria's writing always echoes in my mind, almost sounding aloud over my shoulder as I wandered by Lear's pictures of Corfu. I imagined a refutatory paragraph...

The woman is claiming rape. I detest and refute her ridiculous allegation. Even though it seems hardly necessary, I 've apologised - fulsomely and sincerely - for any hurt she may claim to have experienced as a  result of our very brief liaison. I've leaned over backwards to respect her temperament and sensitivities. Not only that, I have paid, through my lawyers, a generous sum to ensure that her exaggerated and embarrassing allegations are never brought to court. I am more than aware of the seriousness of the crime I'm so unfairly accused of, and in that light I have also given a very large donation to a local rape-crisis centre and indicated my readiness to fund the woman's visits. I will even pay for her to have long term psychiatric care, if she persists in succumbing to the mental problems she's managed to get her advisors to define as the result of 'a traumatic assault' bearing no relationship to actual events or the circumstances of our acquaintance - if that is what it was. If anyone has suffered with the level of hysteria and fuss surrounding what some might even view as a formative and even exciting experience, it is me. 

Our shed and all it contains

Yesterday Linda and I finally assembled the shed on our allotment - our Birmingham apothiki, την αποθήκη. Imram helped us lift the roof into place where it 'clicked' satisfyingly over the four walls. Then I loosened the hinges on the door and fitted that. It doesn't block our view of the park. It needs something transparent like perspex for windows, hooks and shelves inside, plus various small repairs where we cut it up to transport it after finding it in Walsall on freegle, but having a shed on plot 14 marks another stage in getting our allotment together, and of course we can share its use with Robin and Rachel. While on the plot today, Lin went on to rake and grade part of the ground I'd dug over last week making it look dark and fecund. Meantime potatoes are starting to flower and other plantings advance.

Our progress is slow compared to some plotholders but it's very satisfying to make comparisons with the state of our plot a year ago year, or the situation on 30 December 2008 when, as part of our continuing campaign to recover the Victoria Jubilee Allotments. I wrote to the Birmingham Post:

Dear Editor, In 2004, having fought for ten years to prevent losing more green space in Handsworth, campaigners were forced to accept the decision, by a small margin of the councillors on Birmingham’s Planning Committee, to negotiate a Section 106 Agreement to permit new homes to be built on the Victoria Jubilee Allotments (VJA) – a private site neglected by its owners. Can it be that having taken a profit from the houses they and their predecessors, Westbury Homes, have built and sold on the VJA, the current developer, Charles Church*, is seeking permission to renegotiate the agreement made with the Council and – implicitly – with a most active community (Jane Tyler, Birmingham Post, December 24, 2008)? We, with many others, anticipating trends now acknowledged by Government, (e.g. Baroness Andrews’ Introduction to ‘Growing in the Community’ 2nd ed.2008) argued convincingly that there was enough demand for allotments for the whole VJA site to be afforded the protection allotments are allowed by statute and Planning Guidance (PPG17). The city planner’s lower estimate of that demand was used to sway the Committee to approve the application to build houses on the allotments. In May 2007 we were assured by Alan Orr, Perry Barr Community Planning Officer, that new houses had been sold in sufficient numbers to trigger the next stage of the S106A – three playing fields, including a cricket pitch, and 80 allotments. How brash if now, having taken their profit, Charles Church claim themselves ‘burdened’ by the terms on which they made it. Yours, Simon Baddeley, Handsworth Allotments Information Group (HAIG)
*Since 2009 for Charles Church read Persimmon Homes

Thus have I moved in just over a year from the conclusion of a decade-long campaign for the idea of allotments to the real thing. Surprising myself.
Imram who helped us with our shed is also, following a successful bid to the Lottery Awards for All Fund, leading on creating a sensory garden on Plot 79 next to the gates into the VJA. A neighbouring plotholder, Jeevan Singh, sent me a picture of Imram and volunteers working on the early stages of a plot which will be open to all. The site will have other plots especially for particular groups and there is to be a council plot mainly for schoolchildren.

Volunteers preparing the sensory garden

*** ***
Oriana, my half sister, Professor at Chelsea, wrote with a letter attached:

Dear Simon. I thought you might be interested in this? Hope all is well. Xx oriana

The attached letter - on an academic matter - included this:

Dear Professor Baddeley....Upon initial arrival in London in September 1964, I found a magnificent one bedroom flat for let at 5 Bina Gardens, London SW 5. The interview for becoming a tenant took place somewhere in Mayfair with a very distinguished older woman by the name of Mrs. Maine. It became known to me, later on, while residing at 5 Bina Gardens, that she had grown children, one of whom had the last name of Baddeley. I remember chatting to her grandson, Simon, on several occasions. If memory serves me correctly, she had either a son or daughter who was well known in the British theatre. Seeing your name brings back those memories, and I am wondering if you have any relation to the Baddeley family? If this is not the case, please forgive my enquiring curiosity, but one never knows unless one asks...Musically yours from Chicago, Elisabeth Matesky (American Violinist/ Artist Teacher of Violin and Chamber Music/ Composer-Arranger for Solo Violin/ Musical Writer and Speaker) 

Me - back to my sister:

Dear Oriana. The longer we live the more likely it is that things will come round again. Thanks for this. I’d never actually forgotten Elisabeth. She’s a very special talent. ... About two years ago remembering one time long ago, I wrote a friend: 'We had a young American violinist upstairs - when I was a post-grad aimless in a big old place on the Earls Court-Kensington border a mile north of the Thames. I'd hear her practising through two floors and we'd nod in the hallway. One evening - just before she played a concert at QE Hall - I was giving a dinner party with tables pulled together for about twelve ex-uni friends (when food was cheap) she knocked on my door. "Come in come in, Elizabeth" (I knew her name. Lots of people did, and here was I looking as if she was an extra guest. Wow!) She said "Hi! I won't eat. I'll have a glass of wine. If that's OK?" So she joined our happy conversation. After about half-an-hour - can't remember - she said "Hold on" and dashed off. Well that's that, I thought. A minute later she's back - with that violin. Wood like fine porcelain, looking as if it was held together by polish. "Would you like me to play?" (No. Can't you see we're having a nice conversation?) "Yes yes yes" So she did. Standing just beside me. Except far off, from the stalls, I'd never seen a talent at work. When she hit the strings with her bow I swear bits and pieces flew off. She near looked to break the thing. I couldn't believe the volume she drew from it, fighting it, driving it like I've only seen in close-up shot on tele, but you know how with boxing even the close ups don't show the violence and the danger that excites some people. I saw. We saw and heard. So so beautiful. And she made it look easy. Heart stopping. I was weeping, shaking in a most un-English way - and do now - as I recount that 30 minutes of her generosity to me and my friends.'    ...  How are you all? We are as you know back and forth between Corfu and UK – two homes and two small worlds in each. It’d be lovely to see you and catch up on your perspectives. How are things for god-trodden St Catherine’s given current events in the Middle East? As for Murdoch...what schadenfreude, what quiet pleasure it is to see Ramasses becoming Ozymandias, meeting his due. XXXX Simon

** ** ** **
On Monday morning Lin, Denise and me had a meeting with Jo Burrill, Regeneration Project Officer for Midland Heart to brief her on how things are going with the Handsworth Practical Care Project. The project has a history of doing work for the housing association based in Birmingham with many properties in Handsworth.

And on Tuesday afternoon Lin and I met Sharon and Vicky at Birmingham Voluntary Service Council (BVSC) in Digbeth to learn about the assistance they give to projects like CHPC by way of handling wage packages, including tax and national insurance. They had a long association with the project that for been ended in June 2010.

******* *******
Clavering was the Essex village where I was born. For the last 6 months I've been exchanging emails and images with Jacqueline Cooper who emailed me in April (see also):

Dear Mr Baddeley. I have enjoyed looking at your various websites, which I found on a Clavering search. I was interested to see some photos of Barbara Maine when she lived in Clavering, and wondered if you would give permission for me to copy them for our archives? we are having a local history exhibition in September and I am particularly looking for WW2 material and photos. Many thanks, Jacqueline Cooper, Clavering Local History Recorder, Essex.

19 April '11: Dear Jacqueline. How nice to hear from you. My mother – Barbara – who if you have been looking at my website you may know lives in the Highlands. I’ve been capturing some of her recollections on video, a project we both enjoy. I’ll see her at the end of  May and perhaps we could do a short memoir (6-7 minutes) on video about Clavering, where of course she lived as a child and where she was married and where I was born, at Mill End Dairy Farm. Did you see the picture of me sat on the cart pony Gypsy with my aunt, and grandmother, Bar Maine. I’m pretty sure my mum took that snap. Of course you can use the pictures. I’m sure my mother will be pleased and not mind me giving you her permission. You’ll probably have come across the brief account of how Fl Lt Bobby Jeff (names on the Battle of Britain memorial  as one of ‘the few’), who was set to marry my aunt, Margot (holding the horse in the photo I’ve mentioned), was shot down and reported MIA only days before they were to be married. My grandmother recalls the postman cycling up the lane and thinking she ‘knew’ what news he brought. It was a telegram. All the wedding presents were laid out ready at Mill End. I also have memories of Caton’s Store on the ridge between the village and Mill End Farm. We see it on google now and then. I congratulate you on putting together a history exhibition, especially now when people are feeling gloomy about the economy, many with good reason. Best wishes, Simon 

In her reply Jacqueline mentioned 'Simon...I know Mill End Dairy Farm quite well, although of course it has long since ceased to be a farm. The family there now are Scottish as it happen s- the Inglis (or were when I was there). Some years ago, when my children were still at school, I used to do gardening for a few people including them, just one morning a week but it was a nice garden to work in, right beside Elm Street Lane. There is a huge tree, quite a rare one I thought might be a Black Poplar - maybe it was there in your childhood too. I think I recognise the painting of the outbuilding, which was still in use when I was there, I have the feeling it had been converted into something, but not sure. It would be good to see some more photos of when it was a farm. In a field near there now are some llamas or alpacas, not sure if they belong to the Inglis or someone else. Catons is not a store now, it has recently been bought by someone wealthy who has done a lot of rebuilding etc but at least the old windmill has been repaired.'

My birthplace

Jacqueline sent me a picture she took of Mill End in the last 20 years.  My mother sold the house after Bar, my grandmother, her mother, died in 1969. It seems hardly changed, though Jacqueline tells me there have been many changes since this picture was taken. I was born on Sunday 29 March 1942 in the room behind the far right window on the bottom floor.

A display Jacqueline's made for the Clavering history exhibition

Back to the future - 13 February 2014 
Matt McGinn sent me an email and a photo of one of the mills above Mill End beside Caton's Store - in the year before I was born. I am so grateful when people think of communicating with a stranger about something like this - especially for a placeless person like me it's wonderful to have these piquant dishes of local and personal history:

Dear Simon, I have just watched the wonderful clip of your Mother reminiscing about her time in Clavering. We purchased the Windmill where the shop used to be and it was fascinating to hear stories about the people and the places surrounding the Mill. Mill End is still an idyllic cottage and I'm sure your Mother would be pleased to have known that they still keep many Horses there. I am attaching a picture of the Mill as it was in 1941. Many thanks for your posting. Best regards Matt McGinn, Clavering Mill